


as long as you're with me you'll be just fine

by unfraught



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfraught/pseuds/unfraught
Summary: Gilbert comes down with chickenpox. Anne stops by to help.





	as long as you're with me you'll be just fine

When Gilbert catches sight of the first few bumps, he assumes he’s been bitten by mosquitos, even though it’s nearing the end of September and the first signs of the autumn chill should by all means have chased the last of them away by now.

When the rash continues to spread up his arms and legs and shows no sign of stopping, it’s then that he realizes this may well be a problem.

“Quarantine,” he tells Bash and Mary immediately. His face is slick with a cold sweat as a result of the fever that came with the rash, and he drags the cuff of his sleeve along his forehead. “Pox are catching. I don’t want you two coming down with anything, either.” Gilbert stands and the room spins, but he reigns in his expression and puts on his best grin. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back on my feet in no time.”

Bash’s eyebrows are furrowed, concern written all over his face, but all he says is, “You’d better be.”

Gilbert offers him a weak smile before hobbling off to his room and shutting the door behind him. He makes it to his bed, barely, and wrestles with his sheets for a moment, and when he’s finally settled, he falls asleep in seconds.

*

“So it’s true, then,” Anne says. “Doctors really are the worst patients.” Her cheeks are chapped red from the cold and her hair—shorter and darker than when Gilbert left Avonlea last year, but grown out to her shoulders now—is windblown, and she looks just as lovely as she always does: the corners of her mouth are quirked up in a teasing smile, and her eyes are alight with mirth, but there’s something else there, too, something almost akin to worry.

Gilbert must be dreaming.

“I’m not a doctor yet,” he mumbles, voice foreign to his own ears.

“Well, I suppose you’re well on your way, then,” she says, shedding her coat and scarf, making herself at home, settling in as if she’s planning to stay.

It’s then that Gilbert’s thoughts, murked and muddled as they are, catch up with him. Anne is _here_ , in his home. In his _bedroom_. She’s not some vision his fevered mind pulled from one of his dreams.

She’s here, and she’s going to get sick.

Gilbert rubs a hand over his face and shakes his head in a feeble attempt to regain his common sense. “You can’t be here, Anne. I’m sick, I’m—I’m going to get _you_ sick, and—”

“The family I stayed with when I—” The words seem to stick in her throat and she averts her eyes, and something about it makes Gilbert’s heart twist up. “The family I stayed with before,” she corrects. “The Hammonds. They had three sets of twins, and two more children on top of that. And each and every one of them had chickenpox at one time or another.” The smile she gives him is small, but it still warms him down to his toes, a different kind of warmth than the fever. “Naturally, I caught it, too. I can’t catch it again. And more importantly, I know how to treat it.”

“I’m fine, Anne, really.” Gilbert props himself up on his forearms and feels as though he might faint, but schools his expression into one that he hopes comes across as convincing. “See? I’m feeling better already.”

Anne shoots him a dubious look before stalking across the room toward him and taking a seat on the edge of his bed, and before he can ask what she’s doing, she’s leaning in close and pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. This near to her, he can count the freckles on her face, can catch the scent of her, something like mown grass and wildflowers, can practically feel her heart beating against her chest like a drum.

This near to her, he’d hardly have to move, to kiss her. They’re a breath apart, so _close_ , and Gilbert thinks he would, if he weren’t sick, and if Anne had ever showed any sign of being interested, and if not for a thousand other things.

There are a thousand reasons not to do it, a thousand reasons he _shouldn’t_ do it. Gilbert knows that. But that doesn’t come close to stopping him from wanting to.

“You’re _scorching_ ,” Anne huffs, shattering the moment, and Gilbert tries not to look so obviously transfixed. She lays a hand on his shoulder and gives him a gentle push, setting him onto his back once more. Once he’s settled, she pulls his blankets up to his chin, tucks them around him. “We have to burn the fever out of you.”

Gilbert breathes deeply. “Anne.”

“Have you been drinking enough? Fever is bad, but dehydration is worse. We have to make sure you’re hydrated.”

“Anne.”

“And have you vomited recently? It’s important that you’ve got enough in your stomach, it’ll help you preserve your strength. I’ll heat some broth on the stove for you, alright? It’ll fill you up and keep you warm, and—”

“ _Anne_.”

“ _What?_ ” she snaps.

Gilbert swallows past the fear that’s sticking in his throat and forces himself to voice the thought that’s been scaring him out of his mind all day. “What if it’s not chickenpox?” He sounds so _small_ , even to his own ears, a far cry from the man he likes to imagine he became on his travels abroad. “What if it’s something else? Something _worse_? Smallpox, or—”

“ _No_ ,” Anne says, shaking her head vehemently, as if the mere idea of him having smallpox is the most contemptible thing she’s ever heard. “It’s not. Gilbert, you’re going to be _fine_.” Her voice is hard, strong, but her eyes—more striking and expressive than any other girl’s in all of Avonlea, in all of the _world_ , all the parts he’s seen of it, at least—give her away.

She’s scared for him. Terrified, even. If Gilbert weren’t so frightened himself, he imagines the look on his face would be quite foolish.

As it is, though, the best he can manage is a small, sad smile.

“You don’t know that,” he says. He thinks of his father, bedridden, assuring Gilbert that it was only the flu, that he’d be feeling better in no time, and Gilbert has to swallow hard before he can speak again. “If it’s smallpox, the fever will only get worse, and—”

“When did the fever come?” Anne interrupts, ignoring him. “Before the rash, or with it?”

Gilbert closes his eyes, trying to recall. “With,” he decides. “Because I thought the pox were bites, at first.” The thought makes him laugh a little, and Gilbert wonders if he’s losing his mind, if the fever’s cooked his brain right through.

“Give me your hand,” Anne says, holding out her own. Gilbert lets his gaze flit between her hand and her face, raising his eyebrows, but Anne says nothing, just sits, expectant, her hand unwavering.

After a moment, Gilbert relents, and when Anne takes his hand in hers, he feels the heat rise in his cheeks, and prays that Anne doesn’t notice, or at the very least that she thinks it’s on account of the fever.

“If it were smallpox, the fever would have come first, and the rash would have spread to your face and the palms of your hands,” Anne says, tracing the lines of his palms delicately, like he’s made of glass, and Gilbert doesn’t think he’s imagining the profound relief he hears in her voice.

Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, worrying over Gilbert like they’re old friends, _good_ friends. It’s almost too good to be true.

The smile that spreads across his face must be even more ridiculous than he thinks, because Anne drops his hand like she’s been burned and rockets off of his bed, striding toward his door.

“Well—I’ll go see about that broth, then,” she says, voice unsteady.

“Thank you, Anne,” Gilbert says, earnest. Anne offers him a single, curt nod in reply, then positively _flees_.

*

Anne returns with a steaming bowl of broth and a chair from the kitchen, which she pulls right up to his bedside. She sits beside him and helps him eat, and it’s so easy to imagine what it would be like to always have her by his side like this—in a year, in five years, for as long as she’ll have him.

It’s so easy, and it’s so _right_. He knows it. She’s all he wants, forever.

When he’s through with the broth, she sets his dish aside and pulls out a book.

“Should’ve known,” he says with a grin, and Anne chews on her lip in an attempt to bite back her smile.

“We can’t have you falling behind in school,” she explains, meeting his gaze with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Fair and square, remember?”

“Fair and square,” he agrees, matching her tone. “Let’s hear it.”

Gilbert remembers well the first time he heard Anne read aloud in class. She was spirited, fearless, and when the others laughed, she paid them no mind, because she knew that this was something she was good at, the _best_ at, even. And Gilbert had listened, spellbound, because he’d never heard anything like it, had never _felt_ anything like it. Amidst Billy Andrews’ whispered taunts and the giggling gossip of Josie Pye, Anne stood, shoulders square, eyes alight, and spoke in a voice strong and impassioned.

Now, though, sitting at his bedside in the candlelight, she speaks softly, almost tenderly, and suddenly Gilbert’s eyelids are too heavy, and before he knows it, his eyes are drifting shut.

" _'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the breadth and depth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.’_ ”

“You could do that,” Gilbert says sleepily. “Write like that, I mean. Be the next Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

Anne pauses, and Gilbert’s just beginning to wonder if he’s said the wrong thing when she replies, “I’m not much of a poet.”

“Books, then. Fiction,” Gilbert insists, because—she must know, right? Even her letter to him, the one that he read a hundred times over aboard the steamer, practically memorized, it was just as good as any piece of literature Mr. Phillips had assigned the class to read during his time as teacher. The way she waxed eloquent about the prospect of gold in Avonlea, and wrote so vividly about the change of the season on the island, it was enough to make Gilbert yearn for the home he thought he’d left behind for good.

“Perhaps with all the free time I’ll have while studying tirelessly to become a teacher, I’ll write the next great literary masterpiece,” she teases, but there’s no edge to it, only fond amusement.

“You’ve got such a talent for it, Anne, it just—” Gilbert casts about for the right words, but none of them seem quite right. “It seems a shame to waste it,” he finishes lamely.

“Well, I’ll try not to waste it, then,” she replies, slow. Gilbert’s eyes are still closed, so he can’t gauge her expression, but he thinks he can hear the hint of a smile in her voice. “I’ll come back tomorrow, we can finish the poem then. And I’ll bring more broth, I’m sure Marilla would be more than happy to prepare another batch. Maybe even some cream for the pox, if I can find any.” She pauses, and Gilbert can imagine the look on her face—bottom lip caught between her teeth, eyebrows furrowed, her mind racing a mile a minute.

The break in conversation is long enough that Gilbert begins to wonder if she’s gone, and just as he opens his eyes to check, there’s Anne, leaning in, a whirlwind of red hair, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

It’s dry and quick, hardly a peck, hardly _anything_ , but it’s enough to send his mind reeling. He feels as though his whole body’s been set aflame, turned to light. Surely this is what Moody Spurgeon felt like when he electrocuted himself in class not a month ago—like he’d been struck by lightning in the best possible way.

“Get to sleep now, alright?” Anne says, and though her tone is soft and even, her face is ablaze. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And without another word, she’s gathering up her things and striding from the room.

She kissed him. She _kissed him_. And she’s coming back tomorrow.

It’s only a few seconds before Bash appears in the doorway, a wickedly knowing look plastered on his face. “Now, tell me again about how Anne is _just a friend_ ,” he says, and Gilbert groans into his pillow.

“Shut up,” he says, trying for annoyed and not getting anywhere close to it.

“Feeling better yet?” Bash asks around his laughter, his tone infuriatingly smug, and Gilbert would be bothered by it, if only he could stop smiling.

“You know what? I think I’ve just about turned the corner,” he says, and blows out his candle.


End file.
